Research published in a high-impact factor journal reaches a wider audience. Thus, publishing in journals with higher impact factors and metrics is a great way to increase the reach of your research. Further, impact factors are a tool used to evaluate research in promotion and tenure committees.

Utilize the library’s journal evaluator tool to evaluate the quality and impact of your journal prior to submission. This tool will save you time by pulling impact factors, CiteScore, and other quality indicators for the journals you need, all in one place. All you need to search is the journal title or the ISSN.

Check out our library guide for more information on impact factors and journal metrics.

Alternative metrics provide an alternative for measuring impact at the article level. Looking at alternative metrics (altmetrics) shows you a quicker image of the conversations taking place around your research. It also provides a broader view of the impact your research is making, as altmetrics data can help you understand how your research is being interacted with by the public, government, policymakers, and other researchers. Alternative metrics include social media shares, blog posts, and numbers of downloads and views. 

Not all articles will have alternative metrics, but if your article does, you will see something similar to the image below. Depending on the database and what almetrics they use, this will vary. No matter the altmetrics, you will see the impact of your research faster than traditional metrics like impact factors.

Learn more about altmetrics and how to track your altmetrics in our library guide.

As a researcher, there’s a lot of work you do that doesn’t get the traditional treatment aka doesn’t get published. This doesn’t mean that this knowledge isn’t less valuable, it means it hasn’t been through the peer review process. Traditional publishing is standard, but it does take time to get your work published and for someone else to cite your research and get published themselves. Citations can help you measure your research impact, but they aren’t the only way. With the creation of online repositories, you have tools available to place your research online outside of the traditional publishing realm.

When you submit your preprints, postprints, conference poster, etc., you make your research more discoverable, therefore increasing the chances that others view your work. According to impactstory.org, scientists report getting citations for preprints in articles that are published before their articles are, and citing others ahead of their article’s formal publication. This also helps accelerate science and discovery allowing others to build upon your work more quickly.

At Mizzou Libraries, you have access to MOSpace which is a freely available online repository for scholarship and other works by University of Missouri faculty, students, and staff. You retain your copyright, and we provide access. Once items are submitted, the platform can provide statistics like number of downloads and which countries those downloads come from. Materials freely available on the web often reach a wider audience than those available in high-cost journals.

For example, a postprint of the following article was added to MOspace in 2018.

• Fisher, P. J., & Yao, R. (2017). Gender differences in financial risk tolerance. Journal of Economic Psychology, 61, 191-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2017.03.006
• Postprint in MOspace: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/62875

Since the post print was added, the article has 3,441 downloads from all over the world, which is up from 2,611 in October 2021.

Interested in seeing the worldwide impact of your research? Submit your your work using our online form today.

Defining and managing your online professional identity is often as important as defining and managing your in-person professional identity. One of the ways you can help define and manage your online professional identity is keeping track of your author profiles.

Scopus Author Profiles are a good place to start. Scopus automatically creates a profile for you, based on their database algorithms, and curates a list of your publications, complete with citations and h-index.

Even though the profiles are already created, you should double check your profile every so often to make sure the information (name, affiliation, and publications) is up to date.

Below is what you will see in your Scopus Author Profile.

You can go one step further and link your Scopus Author Profile with your ORCID.

You can search for your Scopus Author Profile here. If you need help with your Scopus author profile, whether that’s updating your profile, linking your ORCID, or providing a citation report, you can email the Health Sciences Library for assistance.

The research landscape is hugely competitive and as a researcher it may seem difficult to break through. You’re in luck. There are several ways to take your impact in your own hands. You can start with the 30 Day Impact Challenge created by Impactstory.

Drawing on years of experience measuring and studying research impact, they’ve created a list of the top 30 can’t-miss, proven effective steps for you to make sure your hard work gets out there, gets attention, and makes a difference—both in your field and with the public.

Daily activities range from creating author profiles, establishing a blog,, signing up for social media accounts in a professional capacity, tracking your publication metrics, etc. You can choose to do all 30 days or only a few. It’s up to you.

Begin the 30 Day Impact Challenge here.

If you have questions or need assistance with any of the challenges, contact the Health Sciences Library.